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Monthly Archives: June 2017

A24 Films continues in the tradition of The Witch of substituting long-staring camera shots and dramatic dream sequences for actual plot points.

A number of critics have disseminated that the plague or sickness in the film is never identified. Some great cleverness is afoot, they argue. I say poppycock: the filmmaker is simply incompetent, or worse, taking the easy way out. It Comes at Night may have been a fine short film, but there is way too little here for a feature.

The movie is far too solemn and high-minded to indulge in anything resembling scares or thrills, instead doubling down on the queasy atmosphere and lots of long, slow-tracking shots in which nothing happens.

Put another way: The Trigger Effect was a good movie. Toward the end of the picture our heroic father attempts to break into a house to save his young child. It Comes at Night is just that small part about trying to break into a house. You have to think a little bigger sometimes people. You’re making a movie.

One last thing: the non-ending of It Comes at Night fits this non-movie well. 3/10

The terrific TBS promo for We’re the Millers had a lot to do with my desire to see the film. This promo does not exist anywhere on the internet, that I can find, other than the fragment pasted below — and that’s a shame. TBS should be proud of its promos. I do have a small problem with it — there is no girl playing a saxophone on the beach in the movie. There’s not even a beach. The musical backdrop, indeed, has no relation to the film at all — which technically amounts to perjury. However, I certainly can’t ding a movie based on a television network’s independent ad campaign for it.

We’re the Millers falls in the sub-50% zone on Rotten Tomatoes. One critic wrote that “The filmmakers lack the courage of their convictions.” Maybe so — but I know that going in. Put another way, I judge a movie on what it is, not on what it isn’t. I’m not expecting high art or tense edginess. I’m expecting Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston in a fairly mindless comedy.

And it works on that level. There’s something likable about these characters, and this story — raunchy and banal as it often is. It comes nowhere close to comparable films Vacation or Due Date, but for what it is, it succeeds — barely. 6/10